Clinton Denounces Tabloid’s Sex Story

WASHINGTON —  Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton Friday dismissed as “trash” and “an absolute total lie” stories in a supermarket tabloid and two New York newspapers repeating old allegations that he had carried on extramarital affairs with five women in the 1980s.

Several of the women were named Friday in the New York Post and New York Daily News, both of which based their reports on a story in the upcoming issue of the Star, a nationally circulated supermarket tabloid. None of the publications offered any evidence to back up the allegations, and Clinton did his best to brush them aside as he campaigned in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

“The Star says that Martians walk on the Earth and people have cows’ heads,” Clinton said of the tabloid’s usual stock in trade. “I just make the statement I always make (about the alleged extramarital affairs). It was thoroughly investigated. It’s not true.”

Clinton has been married since 1975, and he and his wife have one child.

The allegations reported by the Star have been circulating since Clinton’s 1990 gubernatorial campaign and have been checked out by several news organizations, including The Times. None of the news organizations have discovered any support for the stories.

A disgruntled former Arkansas state employee named Larry Nichols, who was fired for misconduct in 1988, first made the allegations public a few weeks before the 1990 election. In a recent interview with The Times, Nichols acknowledged he had an “agenda” toward Clinton: “To run him out of the state.”

Nichols was fired for using state telephones and air freight accounts to raise money for Nicaraguan rebels. He sued Clinton over the firing and used his lawsuit as a vehicle to air the allegations of affairs.

In interviews with The Times late last year, two of the women Nichols had named denied the rumors. Two others have denied the stories through representatives. The fifth could not be contacted. On Thursday, Nichols signed an affidavit retracting the allegations about one of the women.

On Friday, a top Republican official in Arkansas admitted to the Associated Press that he had held about six meetings with Nichols in which he provided him legal advice. That disclosure brought a sharp rejoinder from Clinton’s campaign, which demanded to know if the GOP was helping to spread the rumors. A spokesman for the Republican National Committee denied any involvement by the party in the rumor campaign.

Although Clinton faced questions from reporters about the allegations at appearances in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the publication of the rumors did not appear to significantly disrupt his campaign, and rival candidates denounced the stories.

Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey called the report “sensationalism” and said it had no part in the campaign.

Still, Clinton press aides spent most of the day dealing with a deluge of calls on the subject, and campaign aides said they expect voters to ask him more about the subject once the Star hits newstands next week.

Clinton has never flatly denied all accusations of past infidelity, saying he should not be measured against a standard of “perfection.”

“What I think the people want, what I hope they want, is not someone who ever pretends to be perfect in any way,” Clinton said in a recent interview. “Most people intuitively sense whether they’re dealing with a person who has a center or a core. That’s far more important to them than whether a person has made any mistakes in his life.”

Times political writer Cathleen Decker in Manchester, N.H., contributed to this story.